Category: Jane Hirshfield

1.
I am looking out my window, trying to understand the presence of rain on a hot April afternoon. I had a list of things to do in my head: answer letters, book a flight, read a book, get some work done. Try to end the week productive. Be responsible. Connect with the world. Make good choices. I’m not all the way there, but I did okay. I think.

3.
Awhile back, R. shared with me two prayers. I was quite sure they’ll be ruined when spoken by me. But R., well—he knows me. He gave me one for the sunrise: “I am not afraid to die today.” And another for the sunset: “I am glad to be alive.”

4.
Here’s another.

SheepJane Hirshfield

It is the work of feeling
to undo expectation.

A black-faced sheep
looks back at you as you pass
and your heart is startled
as if by the shadow
of someone once loved.

Neither comforted by this
nor made lonely.

Only remembering
that a self in exile is still a self,
as a bell unstruck for years
is still a bell.

Today my parents are celebrating their twenty-ninth year of marriage. I look at them and can’t believe they’re still fooling themselves. My father’s fingers, devoid of a ring. My mother’s gaze, unfeeling.

Not YetJane Hirshfield

Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.

Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch –
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Last Friday was one of those rare evenings that I find myself out with friends (being introvert I always have too many excuses — it’s too far, it’s too late, I’m busy, I’m sick, I’m depressed, etc.). I attended J’s first gallery exhibit. I felt bad for missing the opening night, but also relieved since I didn’t want to be making small talk with people I seem to have outgrown over the years. I’m bad at gatherings, because I don’t always know what to say. I could let people go on and talk about themselves, but that also means there’s going to be a pause where they ask me how I was, you know, just to be polite — and instead of deflecting the question, I instantly blabber on about the most inane things. I am awkward and irrelevant, and I hate it, and inside my head I am jumping up and down, screaming at myself to shut up but there seems to be a disconnect between my brain and my body parts. So, anyway — back to J’s exhibit, which was fantastic. A few Christmases ago I printed some of her photos and put them in makeshift frames and gave them as a gift. I have always known I’d see her works on a wall someday, and now it has arrived, and wow, it only took a few years, see. I’m so proud of her and wholeheartedly believe that she was born to do this.

That evening out made me feel a lot better. Friends always make things better. And poetry, of course.

The FallingJane Hirshfield

You turn towards meteor showers in August,
wishing yourself like that:
bright and burning wholly out.
When feeling finally comes it is
that falling, matter breaking away
from air, the sound
of crickets moving through the grass like fire—
and the strangely twisted metal
in the field that a child finds:
residue, crown.
Then there’s the story of the Chinese sage,
in anger and despair, who cut his body away in pieces,
flung them into the lake.
Each one, becoming finned and whole, swims off.

Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and
starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, into the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped
from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping
the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of
light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.